Another Development Update!

Greetings to all you would-be cryatists out there! It is time for yet another progress report on how Cryamore is coming along.

DUNGEONS AND STUFF

It’s been tricky to find much to show lately as a lot of the work done recently has been put towards laying out more of the maps for the Overworld and the “dungeon” areas.

As we may have mentioned in the previous updates, we’re making sure everything is clear and concise with the maps, so that the cleanup process is as smooth as possible once everything is laid out. In retrospect, it took quite a while, but we noticeably figured that usually there are whole teams devoted to map planning & puzzle design in a comparable game. But we're definitely making it work! Every now and then, we have to go back to some of the maps we’ve completed to make sure everything looks right and sometimes add or take away from them, tweaking things until we feel it’s solid.

We did just that recently in a Cryamore team meeting where we decided to run through some of the map layouts we’ve made so far. We’re happy to say it’s really going to be a lot to explore as it took us about 15-20 minutes to explain all the rooms and puzzles of just one of the maps. Translated into game-time with the player not knowing the puzzle solutions, exploring each area, running around and fighting mobs, each dungeon could take quite some time to finish. And as we've stated with previous updates, the way to explore will not be strict at all. This will be a rather lengthy game. With the speedy and adaptive abilities we've designed (like the ability above which has not been revealed yet), we're also making sure levels and areas are tweaked as well for speed-running too, at the best we can.

While we ran through the areas, we made sure each puzzle wasn’t too hard or too easy, as well as scaling the difficulty appropriately. We tried to make some of the obstacles the player face accept multiple solutions so just like Esmy, you’ll have to use your head a little and experiment between different abilities or gameplay methods.

MONSTER PREVIEWS

Before we got started on fleshing out the backgrounds though, we were working on designs and animations for some of the baddies that Esmy will encounter throughout her adventures. Here are few work-in-progress silhouettes of a few:

GAMEPLAY TWEAKS

We’re going to be reworking how the Butcherknife (sword) attacks work. Its swings were inconsistent since North & South are a sweeping slash while East & West has Esmy slashing downward instead.

The guide above should help provide a better idea of how the swings will work. The green arcs give an estimate of how wide the sword’s hitbox should be. We really want Cryamore’s combat to be as enjoyable as the other aspects of the game so we feel reworking the current sword attacks is important.

We’ve also decided to make the weapon you choose visible at all times. Shown above are the first batch of weapons, the Butcherknife (sword), Pizzaxe (axe), Javelink (spear) and Megadart (crossbow). This should help you feel a bit more of an attachment to your weapon of choice as you go through your adventure with it.

Another tweak to gameplay we’re working to implement is being able to cast certain abilities while running. Not all of your abilities will work with this as some require channeling like Rock Drill and Cubic Ice but other abilities like Spitfyre should now be more useful as you can run and gun to your hearts content (or until your EP runs out…) While running, with some abilities, you sacrifice precision even though casting is instantaneous, compared to neutral/idle casting, which takes about 3 frames to initiate.

DEVELOPMENTAL BREAKDOWN

No, we're not having a breakdown! It's just a breakdown of where we're currently at! Overall, Cryamore is still far from finished but we’re constantly making progress in all the fields.

PROGRAMMING

Most of the programming for the game’s core has been set a long while back by Ryan and Brandon. We can easily add new things as we see fit, monster sprites, assign a behavior to them, their drops & attacks, event-threading, and cutscene creation. What remains of the programming is working on some core combat tweaking, special AI for bosses, shops, map checking, and playtesting (a LOT of playtesting, which will lead to fishing for bugs… but we're sure you all will help us out in that regard when that time comes).

MUSIC & SOUND

Music and sound are worked on as we go along. Aivi bases the music she makes on what the environments look like so as to make sure everything fits the feel of the area nicely, the same goes with sound as Surasshu bases the SFX on what the character looks like and how they’re animated, as well as how each ability effect is designed and animated.

DESIGN

Rob, Alan, Judy and JC have the designs halfway done as all the major characters are fleshed out already. The other half consists of certain NPCs designs ranging from people, critters and bosses along with gathering all the backer NPC designs and making sure they’re all set with what they want before we make concepts of them as denizens of Noka Island and then Rob and Alan can convert them to pixel sprites.

BACKGROUNDS AND ENVIRONMENTS

Rob and Alan have the backgrounds nearing about 75% completion also as the laying out of the various dungeons and Overworld are coming to a close. There are still interiors of buildings in Ghilcrest and the Settlements but the only concern with those are making them pretty. After that it’s all cleanup, color and slicing of elements to layer them in the game, which is a rather brisk process in itself. For example, a whole area/dungeon can take about a little over a week to draw, color, and add into the game itself.

ANIMATIONS

The animations may not look like they’ve had much progress yet but once the backgrounds are ready for cleaning, Rob, Alan and Chris will get back to animating the many creatures and effects in the game.

SCRIPT

While the story and plot of Cryamore is set already, the script still needs a lot of work. If you’ve played an RPG before, you should know the amount of dialogue present in them. Rob and Chris head the script with the rest of the team around to help brainstorm when needed. As we add the character sprites into the game we can further work on the extra bits of the supporting dialogue (which includes backer NPCs).

VOICE ACTING

There may not be much dialogue recorded yet for the game but the progress shown indicates the voice talents that have been set already. As the script is finalized, we can begin voice acting (which will be directed by Chris) and then apply the recordings into the game easily.

CLOSING STATEMENTS

We've been feeling a bit down on ourselves while working that we have not been able to reach our original goal, but we've come to admit to ourselves that our original goal was quite optimistic with a game of this caliber and depth. With that said, we have to change the original March release date to TBD, but we're still making substantial progress to the game each day. Apologies are in order, but we will continue to do our best to keep you all updated as usual!

Also, we're finalizing the revamped site with the new preorder system/widget from Humble Store, and we will definitely have an update when that goes live!

Also, you know we can't let you read an update without leaving you with a bit of musical love! Here's the groovy and moody theme to the Phantom Marshes at night, when all the big baddies come out and jam to beating poor Esmy up! Enjoy! (Don't worry about us spoiling you too much with music, we have so much more where this is coming from.)

Comments

I still believe in you guys. Id just love a small "Hey things are happening!" every now and again... every other month wouldnt be that bad right? But hearing nothing from March to July makes me worried :/

Yeah I had a gut feeling the game wouldn't be done by march. The redesigning phase can do that when creating a program. I would rather wait, please take your time to make a wonderful game. Release the game when the team feels it's ready. I can't wait to see what secrets NostalgiCO have been working on.

Not sure if you've answered this in a different update, but are there any long term plans to bring this game to consoles? I'd love to play this on PS4 or Vita or something. Obviously finishing the game for PC and such will take priority, but just curious.

I am often curious about video game scripts. Like, how long they are, how the interactive/non-interactive scenes are split up, etc. Is there any chance you might share some of the drafts, maybe after the game's been released?

Take your time and make it really good.
I've backed 65 projects now and I enjoy every update you produce. Your project is solidly in my top ten of most beloved game projects on KS so far.
Sure I'd love to play the game (who wouldn't here), but seeing it progress steadily is a fantastic reward on it's own. The music I've heard so far is great. My favourite up till now is the shopping music.

Superbacker

If anyone actually believed this game was going to finish in March 2014, then they must be kidding or have no idea on how video game development works. I prefer a game to take as much time as they need, in exchange for that all I ask is for some updates which Cryamore team has been doing, so all is well!

Besides, the new South Park RPG game just came out today and there is a sh*t ton of other games to play as well, like Shovel Knight coming soon, Shantae, etc. I am going to guess that Cryamore will see a release date between March-May of 2015 but that's just me and I am completely ok with that.

Just about every Kickstarter has underestimated their development times, so I'm not really shocked or worried. Seems like the game is still coming along well, and I'll be happy whenever it gets here. I've got plenty of EDF to play at the moment anyways.

While I can't speak for other backers, I'm sure a lot of us look at it like this.

You've been providing us with meaty updates, constantly letting us know of your progress and everything else that's going on. You're continued activity on the Cryamore forums too also shows a lot about your character.

You aren't letting any of us down, in fact I'm more behind you than I ever was before. Nothing in life goes as planned, and as a result we have to work around what we can.

Just keep doing the best that you can, and we'll all be waiting to play this incredible game your producing. I still stand by this being one of the best investments I have ever made.

Superbacker

Awesome, thanks for the update!
For the sword hitboxes, can you guys confirm whether those regions are for Esmy standing at that center point, or when she's placed in each of those four positions? If it's the latter, I'm curious to see how they overlap with Esmy standing in the same spot.